Oscar Night Special

If you're like Seattlest, the Academy Awards, like most award shows, can make you feel like the world has gone crazy. You're obligated to watch, or to care, at least to get through water-cooler conversation at work the next day. We usually haven't even seen most of the nominees for Best Picture, and if we have, then we know for a fact that the nominated The Aviator was ridiculous while the unnominated Hotel Rwanda made us sob...so clearly, the nominations are effed.

We'll tune in, of course, mostly to see Chris Rock host, and also to see Jamie Foxx's (nee Eric Bishop) acceptance speech for Ray, a movie we did not see, but for which, apparently, his award is a foregone conclusion.

We'll also tune in to see Bellingham's own Hilary Swank, who is up for Best Actress in Million Dollar Baby--another movie we haven't seen, although you'd have to be living under a rock to not have heard about its "twist."

Three out of four film critics in Bellingham are rooting for the Swankster. And apparently all of Iowa (where her grandparents live) is rooting for her as well.

Swank described her upbringing in Oprah Magazine:

I grew up in a tiny town called Bellingham, Washington. We had little money, yet the trailer park where we lived was surrounded by the most beautiful scenery ever and I feel rich with these memories. Some of my fondest involve the lake that bordered us, Lake Samish. Now, this is not just a beautiful body of water, it is one of my best friends. I say that because I shared all my dreams, desires, happiness, fears, and sadness—and every waking minute I could—with it.

Her Iowa relatives giggle at the trailer-park references:

They also laughed at media depictions of growing up in a mobile home in Bellingham. "It was a nice trailer," said Swank's aunt, Shirley Hightshoe of Mount Ayr. "They weren't trailer trash by any means."

Some other fun facts about our homestate hero: she competed in the Junior Olympics in swimming, she played Mowgli in a theatrical version of The Jungle Book, she neglected to thank her husband, Chad Lowe, while accepting her Best Actress Oscar for Boys Don't Cry, and she replaced Ralph Macchio in The Next Karate Kid.

Seattlest wishes her luck tonight.